Citing signs of military progress in Iraq, America’s neoconservatives are reasserting their vision of the United States as an imperial power that can reshape the Muslim world in a way favorable to the interests of Washington and Tel Aviv.
McClatchy Newspapers has been a rare treasure, a news service often reporting the facts and history flatly contradicting the PR streaming out of the White House.
But Leila Fadel's piece Monday is a disappointing exception.
Fadel writes:
BAGHDAD — Iraq and the United States agreed Monday that the U.N.-mandated occupation of Iraq will end in December 2008 and that any U.S. troop presence in the country after that time will be subject to U.S.-Iraq negotiations that are to be completed by next summer.
But there was no "UN-mandated occupation" of Iraq. Bush could not muster it. And Fadel parrots a discredited administration line.
The U.S. is calling the shots in Iraq. The war of aggression remains illegal. There is no functioning government in Iraq, as millions remain displaced, and over one million killed, wounded or jailed.
As Robert Parry notes (Sept. 4, 2004):
“Although the (UN) inspection organization was now operating at full strength and Iraq seemed determined to give it prompt access everywhere, the United States appeared as determined to replace our inspection force with an invasion army,” Blix wrote in his book, Disarming Iraq. ...
Perry quotes Bush:
“I went there [the United Nations] hoping that once and for all the free world would act in concert to get Saddam Hussein to listen to our demands,” Bush said during the presidential debate on Sept. 30, 2004. “They [the Security Council] passed a resolution that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. I believe when an international body speaks, it must mean what it says."
Fuuny.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has said the U.S. invasion of Iraq was ''an illegal act that contravened the UN charter.'' (BBC, 16 September, 2004).
Scott Ritter points out that:
Unilaterally attacking Iraq is totally unconstitutional and illegal under United Nations Charter and Nuremberg Judgements.
Andy Dunn points out in Z-Net:
Bush claimed that he was invading Iraq to enforce UN Security Council (UN Security Council) resolutions and that the UN’s reluctance to endorse his invasion risked making the institution “irrelevant.” Besides the contrary logic of “do what we want or you’re irrelevant,” the charge that Iraq was then violating resolutions on WMD was dubious, if not completely false. Likewise, the charge that resolutions were violated by Iraq’s firing on U.S.-British planes over the “no-fly zones” (aircraft that regularly killed civilians throughout the previous decade) was also false and was rebuffed by the UN’s secretary-general and members of the Security Council.
Powell’s and Bush’s presentations of detailed lies to the UN failed to convince the UNSC that invading Iraq was justified (despite U.S. bribes, arm twisting, and spying on delegations to the UNSC), [in fact, Ari Fleischer was literally laughed out of White House press room for suggesting in late Feb. 2003 that countries were not being bribed to support the UNCS - "MR. FLEISCHER: I haven't seen the story. And you already have the answer, about what this will be decided on. But think about the implications of what you're saying. You're saying that the leaders of other nations are buyable. And that is not an acceptable proposition. (Laughter.)" The video is hilarious.] a lack of approval which made our subsequent invasion explicitly illegal under the UN Charter, under international law as agreed to by the U.S. through treaty (and hence also illegal under U.S. law), and under war crimes conventions that describe such aggressive war as the “supreme crime.”
Remember Bush's March, 2003 speech that "France and the rest of world have to show their cards on the table" to support a UNSC resolution authorizing the invasion.
Bush never got his resolution, invaded anyway, with predictable results.
So, now the UN has mandated the occupation of the country, the invasion of which it refused to endorse?
What's with Leila Fadel?
What's with McClatchy Newspapers?
Please contact and ask: McClatchy Newspapers' Baghdad bureau can be reached through the D.C. office. Leila Fadel, Bureau Chief, kriraq@yahoo.com .
Update:
Amazing the opprobrium one receives in asserting that:
- Charter of the United Nations, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal still apply today.
- The Westphalia convention still applies today.
- The Iraqi invasion and war are and remain illegal.
- The Iraq government is a fiction.
One writer at Kos, in a cross-post, tells me in comments twice to “fu&K off”.
And now accuses me of “Following me around and TRing (whatever that means) me from diary-to-diary ... ,” though I have no idea who this writer is, and have not (and judging from his/her comments) would not read his/her pieces, diaries, as it were.
Person IDs him/her self as one Shane Hensinger. He/she must be off the meds.
One cannot speak of a UN-mandated occupation when an illegal war of aggression continues in a land with no legitimate government.
Some Kos readers fail to grasp this rather obvious point that the rest of the world comprehends effortlessly.
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Grabble, Grabble
ReplyDeleteThe most intelligent pro-war comment yet.
ReplyDeleteRevealing of pro-war thinking.